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Parenting Quotes

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Parenting Quotes

“I was not meant to have to do this part alone. The teenage part. I was changing her nappies yesterday, and today I am grappling with the reflection of my failures in her too-wise eyes. I am trying to allow her to grow while simultaneously keeping her from drifting away. I want her to know life, its beauties and its complexities, I want her to take risks and make mistakes and know love as we all should, and yet those things feel too big, they are dwarfing us, she is just a baby and I really need my wife.”

GriefParentingComing Of Age
Book:Wild Dark Shore
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“Parents are to teach their kids, to give them tools and opportunities in which to learn and grow. Parents are not to learn for their kids, for what benefit is it to anyone if we prevent our children from acquiring their own knowledge?”

Life LessonsChildhoodParentingParentsRichelle GoodrichRichelle E GoodrichTeaching Children
Book:Hope Evermore: Quotes, Verse, & Spiritual Inspiration for Every Day of the Year
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“As parents one of the biggest jobs we have, is teaching our children how to resolve problems effectively. We live in an era where everyone is quick to act the fool over simple issues. As we used to say when I was on the streets, ‘everybody wants to cut a movie’.”

Letting GoParentingParentsParenthoodConflict ResolutionWalking AwayConflictsPeace MakerResolving ProblemsStreet ViolenceAct The FoolCut A MovieSimple IssuesYouth Violence
Book:The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father
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“Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger's touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body. But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality. In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh. The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves. In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber.”

ChildrenParentingMotherhoodVulnerabilityBabies
Book:Dragonfly in Amber
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“Had I catalogued the downsides of parenthood, "son might turn out to be a killer" would never have turned up on the list. Rather, it might have looked something like this: 1. Hassle. 2. Less time just the two of us. (Try no time just the two of us.) 3. Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kid's insufferable friends and their insufferable parents.) 4. Turning into a cow. (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My sister-in-law had developed bulging varicose veins in her legs during pregnancy that never retreated, and the prospect of calves branched in blue tree roots mortified me more than I could say. So I didn't say. I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.) 5. Unnatural altruism: being forced to make decisions in accordance with what was best for someone else. (I'm a pig.) 6. Curtailment of my traveling. (Note curtailment. Not conclusion.) 7. Dementing boredom. (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the outset, admit this to myself.) 8. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversation with a friend's five-year-old in the room.) 9. Social demotion. (I was a respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow, every man I knew--every woman, too, which is depressing--would take me less seriously.) 10. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she can escape? Apparently, the childless get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother would feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter's life is hideous, too.)”

ChildrenKidsParentingMotherhood
Book:We Need To Talk About Kevin
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“It's not politically correct to say that you love one child more than you love your others. I love all of my kids, period, and they're all your favorites in different ways. But ask any parent who's been through some kind of crisis surrounding a child--a health scare, an academic snarl, an emotional problem--and we will tell you the truth. When something upends the equilibrium--when one child needs you more than the others--that imbalance becomes a black hole. You may never admit it out loud, but the one you love the most is the one who needs you more desperately than his siblings. What we really hope is that each child gets a turn. That we have deep enough reserves to be there for each of them, at different times. All this goes to hell when two of your children are pitted against each other, and both of them want you on their side.”

LoveChildrenParentingFavoritism
Book:Lone Wolf
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“We pretend that we know our children, because it's easier than admitting the truth--from the minute that cord is cut, they are strangers. It's far easier to tell yourself your daughter is still a little girl than to see her in a bikini and realize she has the curves of a young woman; it's safer to say you're a good parent who has all the right conversations about drugs and sex than to acknowledge there are a thousand things she would never tell you.”

ChildrenParenting
Book:Change of Heart
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“I worry about exposing him to bands like Journey, the appreciation of which will surely bring him nothing but the opprobrium of his peers. Though he has often been resistant - children so seldom know what is good for them - I have taught him to appreciate all the groundbreaking musicmakers of our time - Big Country, Haircut 100, Loverboy - and he is lucky for it. His brain is my laboratory, my depository. Into it I can stuff the books I choose, the television shows, the movies, my opinion about elected officials, historical events, neighbors, passersby. He is my twenty-four-hour classroom, my captive audience, forced to ingest everything I deem worthwhile. He is a lucky, lucky boy! And no one can stop me.”

ChildrenParenting
Book:A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
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“Oftentimes I felt ridiculous giving my seal of approval to what was in reality such a natural thing to do, sort of like reinventing the wheel and extolling its virtues. Had parents' intuition sunk so low that some strange man had to tell modern women that it was okay to sleep with their babies?”

ChildrenParentingEarthyCo Sleeping
Book:SIDS: A Parent's Guide to Understanding and Preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
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“Everything that isn't gospel is law. Let us say it again: Everything that isn't gospel is law. Every way we try to make our kids good that isn't rooted in the good news of the life, death, ressurection, and assension of Jesus Christ is damnable, crushing, despair-breeding, Pharisee-producing law. We won't get the results we want from the law. We'll get either shallow self-righteousness or blazing rebellion or both (frequently from the same kid on the same day!). We'll get moralistic kids who are cold and hypocritical and who look down on others (and could easily become Mormons), or you'll get teens who are rebellious and self-indulgent and who can't wait to get out of the house. We have to remember that in the life of our unregenerate children, the law is given for one reason only: to crush their self-confidence and drive them to Christ.”

ChildrenGraceParenting
Book:Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus
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“We begin to understand that to co-parent is to one day look up and notice that you are on a roller coaster with another human being. You are in the same car, strapped down side by side and you can never, ever get off. There will never be another moment in your lives when your hearts don't rise and fall together, when your stomach doesn't churn in tandem, when you stop seeing huge hills emerge in the distance and simultaneously grab the sides of the car and hold on tight. No one except for the one strapped down beside you will ever understand the particular thrills and terrors of your ride.”

ChildrenParentingCoparenting
Book:Love Warrior
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“The sages advise us to study Torah lishma-"for its own sake" rather than to impress others with our scholarship. A paradox of parenting is that if we love our children for their own sake rather than for their achievements, it's more likely that they will reach their true potential.”

ChildrenParentingJewishTorah
Book:The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children
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“New Rule: Don't name your kid after a ballpark. Cubs fans Paul and Teri Fields have named their newborn son Wrigley. Wrigley Fields. A child is supposed to be an independent individual, not a means of touting your own personal hobbies. At least that's what I've always taught my kids, Panama Red and Jacuzzi.”

ChildrenHumorNamesSportsBaseballParentingParentsChicagoNamingChicago CubsBad DecisionsBaby NamesSports Fans
Book:The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass
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“While you may be able to keep your son Jimmy from owning [a gun], if you try to talk him out of wanting one, you are up against a pretty strong argument: You mean I shouldn't want a device that grants me power and identity, makes me feel dangerous and safe at the same time, instantly makes me the dominant male, and connects me to my evolutionary essence? Come on, Mom, get real!”

ChildrenParentingGuns
Book:Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe
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“On Friday, Rose invites Sophie and I around to the house. We arrive at eight, armed with some fancy wine Dad handed us from his cellar. Unsurprisingly, it’s Rose who answers the door. Crawford’s there, too, talking like he’s done ten lines of cocaine. ‘Unco Tom, you missed what happened today because I was at the table with the naked sand and I was making a big cake and then I gave it to Mummy and I said “eat a bit of this cake” and she did, she ate a bit, but it was really yucky because it was made of the naked sand!’ ‘Kinetic sand,’ Rose says, ‘It’s called kinetic sand.’ But Crawford’s way too wired to listen. ‘And then after lunch Mummy was changing Ellie’s nappy and we took Ellie’s nappy off and Ellie farted and a poo fell out and went on the floor!’ ‘Darling,’ Rose interrupts, ‘I’m not sure everyone likes that story as much as you do.’ Perhaps not, but it’s absolutely slayed Crawford, who’s laughing so hard that he’s having to gasp between phrases. ‘And… and it was… so smelly… Mummy had to… open the window!”

ChildrenChildhoodParentingMotherhoodParenthoodMotheringMother And Son
Book:A Matter of Life and Death
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